Discover the Dreamtime
by Lynn Osburn
Summary: My first Sandman fiction. Hope it's a real blast. I may update, may not! None the less, RR is always welcome.


(Credits to all the right people)  
  
I remember my thoughts as a small child, looking back on them as being naive. But now and then, things will come to me as they do to everyone. Thoughts that trigger the déjà vu within me and I remember when I had last thought of them. I remember once, when I wondered if I was dreaming up my own life. If the teacher in front of me and the students around me were a fabrication of my own imagination.  
  
We all have points at which we wish we were dreaming. Times of embarrassment, or perhaps just a very bad day, at which we desperately hope that all of this happening is a bad dream. That we can wake up at any moment to the relieved realization that it was all the result of bad take out or left-over pizza or leaving the TV on all night.  
  
But wouldn't it be amazing to discover that what we call 'dreams' are the reality? Dreams are chaotic, dangerous things that we only half remember. But are our lives any less so. How much of today do you remember? How much of the detail come to mind over the sordid routine?  
  
'Reality' often feels less real than our dreams do. We wake up, drink our coffee, work at the desk, grab a bite from the lunchroom, and go home to our loved ones day after day till the monotony of it becomes a numb, dulled sensation in our stomachs. There are points in which the world seems like a dream. The moment of you beloveds kiss, the smell of a good steak cooking, the sensation of sex. These heightened sensations feel more real to you, as things often do in a dream.  
  
But to think that your dream world, a place where you are as likely to be chased down the dark streets by an unknown beast as you are to be checking out a library book capable of being real? Is that such a frightening prospect?  
  
It was real enough for me when I met him. Those dark eyes, staring deep into mind, devoid of any real emotion, but reflective of my own. I could see within those deep black pools a mosaic of my own thoughts. In his right eyes he held all my fantasies, my delusions of grandeur, my adventures unlived. In his left eye shone the worst of all my fears, my humiliations and guilt, my revulsion and terror. But the eyes were beautiful, and I could not look away from them.  
  
"Are you real?" I asked him softly. "Or am I dreaming?"  
  
"That is a very good question. Can Dream be real in the world of dreaming? Or am I a dream itself, as my name suggests?" He said this all with the most sober of faces, deadpan and bleak. If not for that countenance I would have felt I was being made fun of.  
  
"I don't know. I always thought you had to be aware of your own existence to be able to dream of another kind of existence." So if Dream is a dream, that he can not exist. Dreams are not aware of themselves."  
  
"Aren't they?" He tilted his head and crossed his arms. "I known many a dream who is aware of it's self as a being. What is more, they are aware of you as a being. So therefore you exist."  
  
"But just because they admit I exist doesn't mean they exist. I dream every night. I know dreams are existing, but that doesn't mean they exist." I knew I was becoming irrational. The words made sense in my own mind, but did they make sense in his?  
  
"Doesn't it? How do you define your own existence? Because you think? Dreams do that, in fact, dreams are thoughts themselves, so of course they are capable of thinking." He smiled, a slight smile that just touched the corners of his lips. He was beautiful. Truly beautiful, in a way I had never seen before.  
  
"Your playing with me!" I launched the accusation indignantly, pointing a naked finger at him. "Your teasing me!"  
  
"Do you wish me to stop?"  
  
"No." I couldn't explaine why. I liked it when he teased me. It was like having a conversation with an old friend. He nodded, those eyes of his not looking away from my face. "But you still haven't answered me."  
  
"You asked a question..."  
  
"No. Not directly anyways." I admitted and blushed. "Sorry."  
  
He placed his hand on mine and I found my movements lazy and awkward. "You wish to know if existence is real, or if it is just a fabrication, and dreams are the reality."  
  
I herd a familiar song rise in the back of my head.  
  
This will be the day that I die  
  
This will be the day that I die.  
  
I nodded. I wanted to know. I wanted to hear more. "Tell me." He held out his hand, pure white and well manicured. I touched it gently, the skin felt like satin against mine. I was willing to go with him.  
  
Oh and while the king was looking down  
  
The jester stole his thorny crown  
  
The court room was adjourned  
  
No verdict was returned  
  
He closed those fingers around mine and I felt my feet rise from the ground, ready to let the dream world take me in.  
  
Bye bye Miss American Pie  
  
Drove my Chevy to the levy  
  
But the levy was dry  
  
But my hand began to slip as someone began to call my name. "No!" I cried desperately, grasping his fingers in mine. "No. Not when I'm so close." I felt the fingers tearing me back to reality, stripping my clothing from me in it's desperation to keep me from this new knowledge.  
  
Oh and there we were all in one place  
  
A generation lost in space  
  
With no time left to start again.  
  
So Jack be nimble  
  
Jack be quick  
  
Jack flash sat on a candle stick  
  
His face looked torn for a moment, as if he could not decide weather or not to play this tug of war game. His fingers loosened around mine, and I prepared to fall.  
  
Bye bye Miss American Pie  
  
Drove my Chevy to the levy  
  
But the levy was dry  
  
And good ole boys were drinking  
  
Whisky and rye  
  
Singing this will be the day that I die 


End file.
